The game center scene in Shibuya is rather sparse, which is surprisingly given the sheer amount of young people that pass through the area every minute. Located roughly a 5 minute walk from the Hachiko exit at Shibuya station tucked in a building is a rather unassuming Sega location. It’s easy to miss and more than possible to walk past without realizing that it even exists.
This location is spread out over two floors, but more on that in a short while, the first of which is fairly well sized. With the standard assortment of crane games and other assorted games to play, though unlike other sega locations, this floor is devoted to more than just crane games as there is a rather large section of fighting games and Gundam Ex to cover the bases. The main floor also covers rhythm games as well.
One thing that I noticed was… how empty this location was, it was very devoid of people with few exception and it easily takes the crown for the quietest game center that I have been in while in Tokyo. There was a decent gathering of couples playing crane games by the exit and maybe a small scattering of players on the various fighting games. It did make it easy to navigate and play games that might other wise be crowded.
One tricky thing that threw me for a small loop is that the game center occupies two floors of this nine floor building… the first and the seventh. Deciding that I owed it to the location to visit it in its entirety I slogged up the elevator. Upon arrival on the seventh floor I was greeted with more of the same.
A rather empty extremely quiet area. The seventh floor offers titles you would usually encounter crowded or with lines at them in more popular locations. As was made apparent when the locations four Kantai Collection machines were unoccupied. Moving through the rest of the seventh floor the locations most popular game was noticeably Wonderland Wars as it was well represented as well as well played, Border Break had a small contingent as well.
Playing a couple of rounds of Wonderland Wars, and full credit play of Kantai Collection, the reason for the general lack of sound became all too apparent. The machines are set to what must be their lowest volume settings. I have never really needed to use the headphone jacks that many games offer these days, but it was almost necessary here.
If you find your self in Shibuya looking for a game center, there are not many and it may be better served to hop on the Yamanote line to Shinjuku about 7 minutes away though as none of the game centers in Shibuya are all that impressive. Though this location could work well if you want to try out a game you haven’t before, the general atmosphere of this place could be be described as sticky.
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